Ghostbusters at E3

Mike Matei / June 4th, 2009

The original Ecto-1 is sitting out here at the front of the convention center. But here’s something that may interest everyone…

I PLAYED THE NEW GHOSTBUSTERS GAME! You play as a rookie Ghostbuster. At first, I thought that was disappointing not to be Ray or Egon, etc. But after a while, it hardly matters, because the rest of the Ghostbusters have such a strong presence in it. Hearing all the original actors’ voices speaking to you, makes you feel like you’re taking an outside perspective, learning to bust ghosts with the boys themselves.

Winston was not there, from the beginning. I was told he’s at an opera, but was assured he’s definitely in the game. Vigo is in it too (the villain from Ghostbusters II) and it’s the original voice. The cut scenes are great. It feels like watching/interacting with the third movie that never happened.

From a Ghostbusters standpoint, I couldn’t help but love it. But the actual gameplay is the big question. There was a bit of a learning curve. Figuring out how to catch the ghosts took me a little while to get the hang of. Obviously, you catch them with your beam and open a trap. But the ghosts are always trying to escape your beam, so you have to jerk the controls around and “wrangle” them.

This is just an early impression, but I think the game is OKAY. If it hadn’t been a “Ghostbusters” game, I wouldn’t be that excited about it. The real reason to play it is for nostalgic value. They paid attention to detail and it shows a lot of love and affection for the Ghostbusters franchise. It’s definitely better than the NES version!